THE TROUT—NATIVE AND PLANTED

A Place to be Remembered

O MANY people a trout is merely a trout, with no distinction as to variety or origin; and some there be who know him only as a fish, to be eaten without grace and with much gossip. Again, there are those who have written at great length of this and that species and sub-species, with many words and nice distinctions relative to vomerine teeth, branchiostegal rays and other anatomical differences. I would not lead you, even if your patience permitted, along the tedious path of the scientist, but will follow the middle path and note only such differences in the members of this interesting family as may be apparent to the unpracticed eye and by which the novice may distinguish between the varieties that come to his creel.

In a letter to Doctor David Starr Jordan, in September, 1889, Hon. Marshall McDonald, then U. S. Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, wrote, "I have proposed to undertake to stock these waters with different species of Salmonidae, reserving a distinct river basin for each." Every one will commend the wisdom of the original intent as it existed in the mind of Mr. McDonald. It implied that a careful study would be made of the waters of each basin to determine the volume and character of the current, its temperature, the depth to which it froze during the sub-arctic winters, and the kinds and quantities of fish-food found in each. With this data well established, and knowing, as fish culturists have for centuries, what conditions are favorable to the most desirable kinds of trout, there was a field for experimentation and improvement probably not existing elsewhere.

Willow Park Camp

Klahowya

The commission began its labors in 1889, and the record for that year shows among other plants, the placing of a quantity of Loch Leven trout in the Firehole above the Kepler Cascade. The year following nearly ten thousand German trout fry were planted in Nez Perce Creek, the principal tributary of the Firehole. Either the agents of the commission authorized to make these plants were ignorant of the purpose of the Commissioner at Washington, or they did not know with what immunity fish will pass over the highest falls. Whatever the reason for this error, the die is cast, and the only streams that have a single distinct variety are the upper Gardiner and its tributaries, where the eastern brook trout has the field, or rather the waters, to himself. The first attempt to stock any stream was a transfer of the native trout of another stream to Lava Creek above the falls. I mention this because the presence of the native trout in this locality has led some to believe that they were there from the first, and thus constituted an exception to the rule that no trout were found in streams above vertical waterfalls.

The Little Firehole

Many are confused by the variety of names applied to the native trout of the Yellowstone, Salmo lewisi. Red-throat trout, cut-throat trout, black-spotted trout, mountain trout, Rocky Mountain trout, salmon trout, and a host of other less generally known local names have been applied to him. This is in a measure due to the widely different localities and conditions under which he is found, and to the very close resemblance he bears to his first cousins, Salmo clarkii, of the streams flowing into the Pacific from northern California to southern Alaska; and to Salmo mykiss of the Kamchatkan rivers. Perhaps the very abundance of this trout has cheapened the estimate in which he is held by some anglers. Nevertheless, he is a royal fish. In streams with rapid currents he is always a hard fighter, and his meat is high-colored and well-flavored.

The name "black-spotted" trout describes this fish more accurately than any other of his cognomens. The spots are carbon-black and have none of the vermilion and purple colors that characterize the brook trout. The spots are not, however, always uniform in size and number. In some instances they are entirely wanting on the anterior part of the body, but their absence is not sufficiently important to constitute a varietal distinction. The red dash under the throat (inner edge of the mandible) from which the names "cut-throat" and "red-throat" are derived, is never absent in specimens taken here, and, as no other trout of this locality is so marked, it affords the tyro an unfailing means of determining the nature of his catch.

The Path Through the Pines

If the eastern brook trout, Salvelinus fontinalis, could read and understand but a part of the praises that have been sung of him in prose and verse through all the years, what a pampered princeling and nuisance he would become! But to his credit, he has gone on being the same sensible, shrewd, wary and delightful fish, adapting himself to all sorts of mountain streams, lakes, ponds and rivers, and always giving the largest returns to the angler in the way of health and happiness. The literature concerning the methods employed in his capture alone would make a library in which we should find the names of soldiers, statesmen and sovereigns, and the great of the earth. Aelian, who lived in the second century A. D., describes, in his De Animalium Natura, how the Macedonians took a fish with speckled skin from a certain river by means of a hook tied about with red wool, to which were fitted two feathers from a cock's wattle. More than four hundred years prior to this Theocritus mentioned a method of fishing with a "fallacious bait suspended from a rod," but unfortunately failed to tell us how the fly was made. If by any chance you have never met the brook trout you may know him infallibly from his brethren by the dark olive, worm-like lines, technically called "vermiculations," along the back, as he alone displays these heraldic markings.

The Melan Bridge

Throughout the northwest the brown trout, Salmo fario, is generally known as the "von Behr" trout, from the name of the German fish-culturist who sent the first shipment of their eggs to this country. This fish may be distinguished at sight by the coarse scales which give his body a dark grayish appearance, slightly resembling a mullet, and by the large dull red spots along the lateral line. There are also three beautiful red spots on the adipose fin.

The Loch Leven trout, Salmo levenensis, comes from a lake of that name in southern Scotland. He is a canny, uncertain fellow, and nothing like as hardy as we might expect from his origin. In the Park waters he has not justified the fame for gameness which he brings from abroad, but there are occasions, particularly in the vicinity of the Lone Star geyser, when he comes on with a very pretty rush. In general appearance he somewhat resembles the von Behr trout, but is a more graceful and finely organized fish than the latter. He is the only trout of this locality that has no red on his body, and its absence is sufficient to distinguish him from all others.

Distant View of Mt. Holmes

No one can possibly mistake the rainbow trout, Salmo irideus, for any other species. The large, brilliant spots with which his silvery-bluish body is covered, and that filmy iridescence so admired by every one, will identify him anywhere. There is, however, a marked difference in the brilliance of this iridescence between fish of different ages as well as between stream-raised and hatchery-bred specimens, and even among fish from the upper and lower courses of the same stream.

Learning to Cast

The question as to which is the more beautiful, the rainbow or the brook trout, has often been debated with much feeling by their respective champions, and will doubtless remain undecided so long as both may be taken from clear-flowing brooks, where sky and landscape blend with the soul of man to make him as supremely happy as it is ever the lot of mortals to become. For it is the joy within and around you that supplies a mingled pleasure far deeper than that afforded by the mere beauty of the fish. You will remember that "Doctor Boteler" said of the strawberry, "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did." So, I have said at different times of both brook and rainbow trout, "Doubtless God could have made a more beautiful fish than this, but doubtless God never did."

Scene on the Gibbon River

Above Kepler Cascade

During a recent trip through the Rocky Mountains I remained over night in a town of considerable mining importance. In the evening I walked up the main street passing an almost unbroken line of saloons, gambling houses and dance halls, then crossed the street to return, and found the same conditions on that side, except that, if possible, the crowds were noisier. Just before reaching the hotel, I came upon a small restaurant in the window of which was an aquarium containing a number of rainbow trout. One beautiful fish rested quivering, pulsating, resplendent, poised apparently in mid air, while the rays from an electric light within were so refracted that they formed an aureola about the fish, seemingly transfiguring it. I paused long in meditation on the scene, till aroused from my revery by the blare of a graphophone from a resort across the street. It sang:

I made the sign of Calvary in the vapor on the glass and departed into the night pondering of many things.